Of course, life being what it was, he would represent Ellen Harrigan, and he’d go down the hall and calm her down himself when he was finally finished with his sandwich.
SEVEN
1
There were now copies of Ellen Harrigan’s list everywhere. The media had them, photocopied by Neil Savage’s office and distributed at the press conference Gregor thought he ought to have seen coming. The police and the District Attorney’s Office had them, photocopied by Rob Benedetti and sent around only after it became clear how far Ellen Harrigan was willing to go. Gregor Demarkian had several, he didn’t know why. People kept putting the list into his hands, as if it were desperately important that he, above all people, should know who was on it. The problem was, he didn’t know even now that he knew. Some of the names were familiar, like that of Neil Savage himself, an inclusion that made Gregor wonder if Savage had read the damned thing before letting Mrs. Harrigan pass it out to half of creation. Most of the names meant nothing at all to him. Who was Alison Standish? The address and phone number next to her name were of an office on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, which was going to make the administration over there as happy as that snowball in hell. People kept urging him to look the thing over, but he had. He had. He’d sat in the waiting room outside Rob Benedetti’s office now for three hours, studying the list and thinking that the thing he wanted most was to get out and have some lunch. He would have had more autonomy if he was being held on a charge. At least in that case, he would have had the right to an attorney, the right to habeas corpus, and the right to appear before a judge.
What he really wanted was not lunch, but lunch with Tibor, in a quiet place, where they could talk. Tibor might or might not have seen the list— whether he watched the news on any given day depended on what else was going on on that day, and he found a lot of things more interesting than the news—but he would most certainly recognize at least one name on it, and it would interest him. It interested Gregor, too. What did not interest him was sitting in this chair, holding this list, watching television from a set screwed nto the waiting room’s ceiling, and wondering what the hell Rob Benedetti was doing now.
He rummaged around in his clothes and got out the little cell phone Bennis had given him. There was a large part of his brain that believed that nobody could hear him speak through a phone whose body came down barely to his chin when he held it in his ear, but he persevered. It had always worked before. Tibor picked up on the other end, and Gregor tried to whisper.
“Tibor? What are you doing right now?”
Gregor half expected Tibor to shout and demand that somebody, somewhere, speak, but it didn’t happen. Tibor just said, “Krekor. I have been hearing about you on the news. Where are you and what are you doing?”
“I’m at the District Attorney’s Office and I’m not doing anything,” Gregor said. “It’s on Vine Street, do you know where that is? If you’re going to take the bus, you can get here on the thirty-two, the thirty-three, and the seventeen. I think there may be more.”
“If I’m coming there, I’m going to take a cab. You want me to come to the District Attorney’s Office?”
“No. There’s a little coffee shop on this block, right across the street from the front door here. I want you to go there and wait for me. Or I’ll go there and wait for you. I want you to meet me there.”
“Why? This is not a criticism, Krekor, of course I will come. But is there a reason?”
“You’ve been listening to the news, you said. What did you think of Drew Harrigan’s widow?”
“Ah, the blond woman with the screechy voice. Her I did not listen to, Krekor, because she had such a screechy voice, it was impossible to listen. Also, she is one of those people. She is profoundly stupid, so profoundly stupid that she lies when it is not necessary, and if you listen to her you spend all your time trying to figure out where the truth is. There is no point.”
“Yes, well. Listen, I’ll tell you all about it when you get here. Meet me at that coffee shop as soon as you can. Tell the cabbie to take you to the DA’s Office and just walk across the street. I’ll be there. And yes, we could have this discussion on the phone, but I need to get out of here before I go crazy. I’ll see you as soon as you can get here.”
“It will be about half an hour, Krekor. Traffic is like that.”
Tibor hung up. Gregor turned off his phone and folded it back into the even smaller shape it had to fit into his pocket. He looked up. The receptionist did not seem to have noticed him making a call, or if she had, she didn’t seem to have heard what he said. There was nobody else in the waiting room to hear. He felt a little silly. He wasn’t a prisoner. He wasn’t making a break for it. It just felt as if he was. Even so, he waited, as patiently as he could, for fifteen minutes before he stood up and went to the receptionist’s desk.